I went through a course once in which people came from all over the US. One guy from Georgia, and said he often felt people made fun ofthe way he talked: the drawl, the "ain't"s, and other odd dialect attributes. He said, basically, that he KNEW how other folks talked and could talk like that if he wanted, but his speech was his heritage, and he wasn't ashamed of it. Personally, I really enjoyed listening to him talk.

I don't like fake-sounding dialect, I'm not going to use it, but I'm not going to make myself look stupid by pretending to know what other people's heritage is if I don't know THEM. I'll find other ways to look stupid.